ABSTRACT
The previous chapter focused largely on the Saharan reaches of Mali and its Algerian borderlands. This chapter will focus on Algeria from pre-colonial times, through the colonial and post-independence periods, up to 2010. It will concentrate on two aspects of the country’s history, state building and the role of Islam. Analysis of Algerian state building will only focus on the highlights. First there will be a brief description of Algeria’s on and off relationship with the Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, then the chapter will cursorily examine Algerian resistance in the early colonial period, and aspects of the French-dominated state and society in the twentieth century, followed by a somewhat closer look at the Algerian War of Independence. Discussion of the post-independence state will focus on the tension between two conflicting visions for Algeria. The National Liberation Front’s (FLN) vision of a secular-nationalist state apparatus with a socialist economy within a single-party political structure on the model of Nasser’s Egypt will be contrasted with Algerian Islamists’ vision of an Islamic state guided by shariah law. The Islamist vision was submerged and suppressed by the nationalist vision for the first 30 years of independence until it burst forth in the turbulent 1990s. The Islamists themselves, as we shall see, were divided between the relative moderates, who favored limited accommodation with the electoral process, and the extremists, who did not. The extremists were divided as well as to whether to support national as opposed to global jihad.
